Greg Palast -- a short biography

Greg Palast is an award-winning reporter for BBC Television and The Guardian of London and a columnist for the London Observer. His extraordinary reports have been front page news in Europe, yet blocked out of mainstream media in the United States. The Cleveland Free Times calls Palast "The world's greatest investigative reporter you've never heard of."

He is the author of
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters
and his new book,
Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild.
  Armed Madhouse (or "mysterious 'yellow book'" as Washington Post blogger, Emil Steiner, "reported" it) was being waved and alluded to by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer just prior to his being Tasered by UF cops earlier in mid-September.

Both books will be available at the event and Greg Palast will sign them.

A native Californian, Palast's bi-continental muckraking began while a graduate business student at the University of Chicago.  His investigations into U.S. corporations were passed over by the U.S. press so Palast went to work for London's Guardian and Observer newspapers and BBC for which he has scooped a string of scandals ranging from Enron to Tony Blair's cabinet to the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO.

In the U.S., Palast broke the story of how Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush removed thousands of Black and Democratic voters from Florida's registration rolls prior to the 2000 presidential election.  The series of revelations first appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, Harper's, The Guardian, and in Salon.com which named the expose "Politics Story of the Year".  Guerrilla News Network named Palast "Reporter of the Year".  He continues to conduct independent investigations on topics ranging from the manipulation of electoral rolls to exclude minority voters, to Big Oil's role in shaping the Iraq war.

Palast's first book went on to be a NY Times bestseller. Palast is also featured in "Counting on Democracy," a new documentary about the Florida elections from Emmy-award winner Danny Schechter and "Unprecedented" from directors Joan Sekler and Richard Perez.

Currently Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television's "Newsnight" and in the U.S. on BBC World.  You may recently have seen him on the Bill Moyer's PBS program, NOW.

Palast's lively website is at www.gregpalast.com/